Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (16 page)

From a cloakroom beyond the kitchen he took a staff and a broad-brimmed hat.

He slipped from the Guardian’s palace out a window. He came to a place he knew, where a tree grew against a wall of the inner city. So long had Ai Hanlo been secure that no one had bothered to cut it down. The tree embraced the wall. The wall supported the tree. Stones and twisted branches intermingled. It was easy to climb down from the top of the wall into the tree. The branches enclosed a little world, where birds had nested for centuries. He saw them asleep, perched in rows or gathered in clusters. He climbed more carefully than ever, struggling to be silent, but one bird awoke, and another, and another, and soon they burst into the air in a cacophony of shrieks and a muffled thunder of wings.

He froze, sure that someone would come running.

But no one came. So he continued his descent, came to a rooftop, and dropped into a street.

He wandered in the dark, muddy labyrinth of the lower city. Once someone called to him from a doorway and made a lewd suggestion. Another time he heard footsteps all around him, and stood perfectly still in almost total darkness until they were gone. At last he found a secluded niche between two tall, shuttered buildings, and sat down to await the dawn.

He awoke in twilight and began walking, always downhill. Sunlight touched the roofs and reached into the alleys. Shutters banged open. He followed the earliest risers until he came to one of the city’s great gates. He didn’t know which one it was. He hesitated, for he knew that the guards at the gate often questioned those who left the city at odd hours, or charged them a toll. He didn’t have any money.

But luck was with him. It was a market day. During the night ships had come to the docks, and already trading stalls were set up all along the road that led from the river to the gate. Inside the city, shopkeepers swept their doorsteps, lowered canopies, and set up goods. Soon the square before the gate was filled with people. It was an easy enough matter for him to go out.

Then he ducked under a rope, went between two stalls, and turned away from the road, coming after a while to the edge of the cultivated fields beyond the city, and onto the broad plain to the south.

III.

He travelled for three days and nights. The autumn rains hadn’t quite started, so the sky was filled with clouds, while the plains were still dry with the dust of summer. The days were pleasant, the nights cold. Always Ai Hanlo Mountain remained visible behind him, the golden dome of the Guardian’s palace like a sun setting in the blue-grey mist of the mountain.

He slept in hollows or in occasional groves of gnarled trees, and ate of the food he had brought with him, also roots and a fat, flightless bird he struck down with his staff. In his years as a wanderer he had learned to survive in places far more desolate than this.

On the fourth day he came to the site of a city far more ancient than Ai Hanlo, perhaps even older than Ai Hanlo Mountain itself. All he saw at first were mounds of stone and earth. It was hard to tell that they were not natural formations. Grass and stunted trees grew over them. Wild goats scampered away as he approached, and a lizard, walking upright on its hind legs, stood on a mound and hissed, then jumped, and glided a short distance away on stubby wings.

But in the evening, as the sun set and the shadows shifted, the city manifested itself to the sound of bells, which he heard faintly at first, then more clearly. They rang, and towers and walls rose on every side, translucent as smoke, merging with the darkness of the oncoming night, becoming more solid, shutting out the sky. At last, when the clouds broke overhead, silver rooftops gleamed beneath the stars, and Tamliade’s footsteps echoed down long, empty streets. Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of the dome of Ai Hanlo, still glowing with the light of the vanished sun.

The windows of the city began to glow softly. He hurried on his way. Still the unseen bells rang. Then the people of the city were all around him, bearing lanterns. ringing hand bells—tall, slender folk with long golden hair and pale faces, clad in golden gowns.

He came to a square where there was a statue of some hero grappling with a giant.

Overhead, silver ships detached themselves from rooftops, drifting like clouds.

A great multitude gathered around him, whispering, “He can see us! For the first time since the death of our god, there is one who can see us!”

They asked him for news of the world. Their speech was strange. He could barely make out what they were saying, but he tried to answer as well as he could. Soon he could tell by their puzzlement that too much time had passed, and the names and nations and places meant nothing to them.

Some of them, losing interest, turned away. They pulled off their gowns, leaving them where they fell, and stood naked, men and women. Delicate, translucent wings unfolded from their backs. They took to the air, drifting, some of them still bearing lanterns. Against the dark sky, they looked like huge butterflies.

Still the crowd pressed him.

“Your goddess is dead too. Another shall come soon after. The fire of divinity never goes out. It may burn low for an age, but soon it flares up again. Sighted one, are you the one in which it burns?”

Tamliade was afraid. “No,” he said, nearly weeping. “I’m not.”

He pushed through them and ran through the streets of the city.

“Please take no offense,” his questioners called after him. “It was wrong to speak of such holy things. Forgive us.”

As he ran, the walls, the houses, the strangely fashioned arches all rippled like water, then filled with a lurid orange light, like molten metal. He ran breathlessly, looking for a way out. He was lost in the maze of streets. Those people he passed merely watched him go.

Then they screamed. The city burst into flame. The people burned like paper cutouts, fragments of them rising and tumbling in the hot air.

Tamliade couldn’t find his way out. He came to a courtyard and cowered in the middle of it. The ground shook. The pavement cracked. All around him, the city died.

Wading through the ruin, a giant came before him clad in armor of molten bronze which flowed and changed shape constantly.

“Where is this one who sees?” the giant thundered from behind its visor. “I am master here. He belongs to me.”

The giant reached down and picked him up. He screamed as the armored fingers burned into his sides. He was lifted to the giant’s face. The visor rose of its own accord, and there was a blast of heat, as if a furnace door had been opened. Within was only blinding flame at first, but then a face formed. He had seen it before, on the statue in the square.

The giant’s gaze penetrated his dreams. The visions came again, every one he had ever had, all at once. The pain of this was greater than the burning. Still the giant probed, beyond his visions, into worlds he had but glimpsed, using him as a mere eyepiece.

In time he felt and knew nothing more than an eyepiece would.

* * * *

It was mid-morning when he-awoke, face down in the dust. Stiffly, he got to his feet. There was no city around him, only low mounds. He touched his sides gingerly. He was not burned.

The contents of his bag were spilled over the ground. He gathered them up. The wine bottle had broken. He couldn’t find his staff, and realized he must have flung it away in the paroxysm of his vision.

He left the ruin, and in another day’s walking came to the crest of a low hill. Beyond. that, he knew, the dome of Ai Hanlo would no longer be visible. So he knelt and said the common prayer of travelers, expressing the hope that what holiness still lingered over the grave of the Goddess would be enough to guide him back within sight of the city.

In truth, if he could somehow be free of his visions, he would have been content never to look on the city again. But still he said the prayer. Then he walked down the far side of the hill, and did not look back.

Two more days passed. He was truly alone now. For so long he had been a wanderer, but during his residence in Ai Hanlo his world had seemed to contract, until all he knew were a few corridors, and rooms filled with dust and shadows, and the universe was shut in by the wall of the inner city. Now it was strange, and a little frightening, to cross this almost featureless land beyond the limits of all he had known.

It was a quiet time, and he savored each moment.

He came to no more ruins. No more ghosts appeared to him. There were only occasional flights of birds far away, and a few animals that fled his approach. He had no visions. His mind cleared. He knew that he clung to his existence precariously, and without warning the wind from the grave of the Goddess might sweep him away to be consumed in holy fire, but a fancy came to him: perhaps if he continued thinking only of immediate things, he could go on forever.

The threatening sky brought him out of his reverie. He came to a series of low, craggy hills. Where two joined, there was a narrow valley, and at the end of the valley, a cave. As soon as he saw the cave, the winter rains began in a thundering torrent. He knew it was a sign. He ran for the cave, arriving drenched and breathless. He sat in its mouth for a while, watching the rain weave shimmering curtains against the grey sky.

He wanted to start a fire, but there was no kindling. He got his cloak out of his bag. It was reasonably dry, so he wrapped it around himself and sat, hugging his knees, thinking over what he had come here to do.

Now that he was facing it, now that the time had come, he was afraid, but he knew there was no going back.

For whatever reason, perhaps because a fragment of the Goddess had fallen on him that night he saw the feathered star, he could see and hear and feel things the senses of ordinary people shut out. He had heard the echo of the death of the Goddess more clearly than had anyone in generations, even those holy men who spent decades in fasting and discipline before they could make out the faintest trace of that sound in a way that was not truly hearing.

For him, it had come without any effort.

As the years went by and the visions increased, he was losing himself. For longer and longer periods he was no one at all, just a jumble of sensations. Often, when he awoke, he could not remember who he was, and his memories came back little by little, as if he were reborn again and again after each seizure, weaker every time.

He wondered: had he always been Tamliade, or was Tamliade a haphazard construct by someone who could not recall who he really was? Was he like a drop of rain, a mere transition between the sky and earth? He had read somewhere: if the raindrop has consciousness; if it feels the passage of the air and sees the ground rushing up to meet it; this does not make it fall any less swiftly.

His plan was simple. In a remote place such as this cave, free from any distraction, he would deliberately summon up all the visions inside him. With all the concentration he could manage, he would reach out and find—he had no idea what he would find. It was as if he were tired of youth, and were forcing maturity upon himself now, rather than waiting for inevitable growth. He would make an end now. He would arrive at the cause of his visions. He would either achieve some revelation, or be transformed, or die. He could not go on as he was.

There was a little food remaining in his bag. He ate the rest of it. If he did not succeed, he didn’t think he would need it. If he did, perhaps he would be beyond such considerations altogether.

The rain fell, filling the cave with the echoes of its sound.

Tamliade began to clear his mind, to concentrate according to disciplines the priests had taught him.

He hesitated. It is one thing to be told by a magician, “You can fly.” It is quite another to jump off a cliff to test this. Tamliade was at the edge of the cliff. In his case there was the further problem that he might never be able to touch ground again.

He waited, listening to the rain, shivering from the cold. Night fell. Still it rained. It was useless to wait any longer.

He began an exercise known as “the string of beads.” One by one he drew “beads” out of his memory and examined them:

Standing with his father beneath the dark sky. The chill of the air. The feathered star.

His wandering. An old woman hobbled before him as he sat starving and delirious at a crossroads. She led her blind husband by the hand. “Holy one,” she said. “Have you the power to heal?”

Outside, in the darkness, the rain fell.

His time as a slave, filled with pain and humiliation and weary hours as the slave dealer tried hopelessly to find a buyer for a boy who lapsed into dreams uncontrollably.

The wizard Emdo Wesa, the old man who more than anything else feared his monstrous brother, Etash Wesa, who had drifted far, far into strangeness, wholly mutilated and transformed by his magic. Tamliade most clearly remembered Emdo Wesa sitting by his wagon at evening. His gloves were off for once. His hands, made of light, glowed like paper lanterns.

Still the rain fell outside the cave mouth.

Still Tamliade drew up the “string” of his life, each memory becoming more and more vivid, drawing him more away from the immediate reality of the rain and the cave and the night.

He stood again before the gate of the inner city, spheres of light circling his head, while crowds of spirits pressed around him, whispering, “Are you the one? Are you the one?”